When we told people we were driving back home for Christmas, we generally got one of two reactions: ”You’re driving all the way to Wyoming?!!? How far is that, even?” and “You’re driving that whole way in the Mini??”
Friends, I can report the answers were: Yes, 1,989 miles. And yes. Two adults, two teenagers and two dogs did indeed go the whole way in my partner’s red Mini Cooper, aka the Red Baron. You need some next-level packing skills, and then you just sit there till you get there.
Here’s a telling fact that illustrates the vastness of the distances as you get out west: the first day, we drove across seven states all the way to Joliet, Illinois. The next two days? Two.
As I have elsewhere mentioned in this column, one of the things I miss from back home is the horizon. Massachusetts is lovely, and Marblehead more so. But as a trueborn son of the high plains, I find myself perpetually seeking a way through the thickets of buildings, trees, highways and people, to find some semblance of a horizon. This is why I often walk to Fort Sewall or the trails at Seaside Park to look out on the ocean.
Well, I can further report that a perpetual wall of trees, trees, trees characterize Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania. Even the farmlands of Indiana and Illinois seem woodsy to someone raised on the high plains. It’s a forest out there.
Yes, the woodlands do not relent until you cross the Mississippi River. You hit a few vistas in Iowa and eastern Nebraska. And then, just as some scenery appears in the form of pine ridges and limestone bluffs, you get home.
Home for us is the border region of southeast Wyoming and western Nebraska, known to locals as Wyobraska. As befitting an area of cattle country and farms, when I was growing up my family had a farm in Nebraska and a ranch in Wyoming. Since then, both my partner’s parents and mine have retired on the Nebraska side of the border, so we had Christmas there.
The first few days back were lovely, a stretch of beautiful 60 degree -plus weather. My son and partner golfed (!) and my daughter took her little cousins to the park. Meanwhile, my brother and I drove up into pine ridge ranch country, where the bighorn sheep roam unperturbed by traffic other than ranchers on horseback. We also ventured into the Nebraska Sandhills, a secluded steppe in northwest Nebraska. No forests there. In fact you’ll see nary a tree, just giant sand dunes clothed in grass where the cattle that dot the hillsides are the only sign of civilization.
There, a “small” ranch runs to fifteen thousand acres, rivers are narrow enough you can leap across, and I found that horizon I’d been looking for.
And now we’ve come to a new year, that time when we all look forward and backwards. My sojourn back to the high plains threw into relief just how different my worlds are. What a rare opportunity to experience two incomparable places that are incomparably beautiful. Here in Marblehead, there have been sea witches and cranberry farms, yoga and “Marblehead Forever.”
And the overwhelming welcome we have received has made this transition a gentle one, and for that I am grateful to all our neighbors and newfound friends.
So what does the year ahead hold? I’ve got a few adventures on the docket: a day out on a lobster boat, a sailboat race, more walks to Marblehead’s hidden secrets. I’ll tell you this much: one year in, I’m a long way away from running out of Marblehead First Times. Plenty of horizons beckon!
And as always, if you’ve got an idea upon which I can embark for a Marblehead First Time, drop me a line at court.merrigan@gmail.com.
